Holocaust
Studies: A Journal of Culture and History
Abstracts of articles in Issue 11.3
- Thomas Brudholm, Surveying a Gap: A
Philosophical Perspective on Historians’ Responses to Discourses on the ‘Bystanders’
- Historians have bemoaned the existence
of a gap separating historical study and public interest in the
topic of the ‘bystanders’.
Moralistic tendencies and emotional excess have been pointed to
as part of the explanation of the problem. This article turns the
critical perspective back upon the historians and argues that there
is more to morality and emotion than is often acknowledged by historians.
If this was recognised, the article suggests, it could contribute
to a lessening of the tensions sometimes arising when historians
meet their public. The article also considers the concept of the ‘bystander’ and
the relationship between the disciplines of history and philosophy
in relation to the study of the Holocaust.
- Regula Ludi, Demystification or Restoration of Neutrality?
Confronting the History of the Nazi Era in Switzerland
- The Eichmann trial is considered a turning
point in reflections upon the Holocaust. This article raises the
questions of how it
influenced reckoning with the past in Switzerland and whether it
impacted entrenched Swiss assumptions on the Nazi era past. For
most of the post-war era grappling with wartime history has been
intimately linked to neutrality which was both a determinant and
outcome of collective memory production. A specific framing of wartime
memory was decisive for stabilising narrow conceptions of neutrality
during the Cold War which justified Switzerland’s international
isolationism. Neutrality (and the values associated with it), in
turn, was a chief obstacle to confronting received representations
of the past. In recent years, however, an uncoupling of memory and
neutrality conceptions can be observed. With its demystification
in the wake of the Holocaust era asset scandal, wartime memory has
lost its significance for national identity formation, while, ironically,
neutrality is experiencing a revival.
- Lone Rünitz, Denmark’s Response to the Nazi Expulsion
Policy 1938–39
- Denmark has been recognised and revered for its rescue of
its Jewish population in October 1943. Only in recent years has scholarly
attention been given to the treatment of the Jewish refugees before
the Second World War. Studies conducted at the Danish Institute for
International Studies, Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
now reveal how the borders of Denmark in the late 1930s were made
virtually impenetrable to Jews from Germany, Austria and other East-European
countries, unless they carried a visa to a third country.
- Christian Leitz, Spain and the Holocaust
- Among the European neutrals during the
Second World War, the Franco regime in Spain stands out as the
only government hoping
for a victory of the Axis. Not showing much interest for the concerns
of the western democracies, the regime was also indifferent to the
fate of Europe’s Jews. In fact, even though a limited number
of Jews were able to escape Nazi persecution via Spain, Franco Spain’s
(economic) assistance to Nazi Germany helped to protract the war
and, thus, to prolong the ability of the Nazi regime to pursue its
exterminationist policies.
- Document Report: Paul A. Levine, One
Day during the Holocaust: An Analysis of Raoul Wallenberg’s ‘Budapest Report’ of
12 September 1944
- Most people interested in the Holocaust know of Raoul
Wallenberg, the young Swedish diplomat who made such a memorable
contribution to human life and dignity during the Holocaust. But
the empirical details of his mission in Budapest during the second
half of 1944 are, it seems, far less familiar than the aura of heroism
associated with him. He was a properly accredited diplomat who drafted
or dictated some fascinating diplomatic reports during his months
in Budapest, and this article explores in detail one such report.
Dated 12 September 1944, a careful analysis of this report reveals
a number of interesting things about Wallenberg himself, how he
perceived the complicated task at hand, and how and what the Swedes
did to assist and aid Jews in mortal danger. This single report
also illuminates some important aspects both about the Holocaust
in Budapest, and more general aspects of the genocide.
- Tom Lawson, New (and Old) Perspectives on the Catholic Church
and the Holocaust
- Recently there has been a flurry of publications reviewing
the controversy of the Catholic response to the Holocaust. Despite
an unchanging documentary record, all of these interventions have
produced vastly differing conclusions. This article attempts to
account for this range of historiographic perspectives, and uncovers
a great diversity of philosophical and methodological approaches
to the study of history, and deeper controversies regarding the
meaning of the Church and Christianity in the twentieth century.
It is therefore argued that the controversy over the Catholic Church
and the Holocaust masks a much wider disagreement about the Church,
history and, in the final instance, the meaning of the Holocaust
for the contemporary world.
- Review Article: David Cesarani, Downfall: An Apologia for
Complicity?